


With the Heart of a Child

by mytimehaspassed



Series: Moon Fever [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Ghosts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-03
Updated: 2012-06-03
Packaged: 2017-11-06 16:49:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/421111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six months after Stiles had died, Scott had come to his charred bedroom with flowers gripped tight in both of his hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With the Heart of a Child

**WITH THE HEART OF A CHILD**  
TEEN WOLF  
Derek/Stiles; Lydia/Jackson  
 **WARNINGS** : ghost!AU; (so obviously) main character death  
 **NOTES** : Moon Fever Series

First: [You With Air](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/26839.html)  
Second: [Nothing But Heart](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/27050.html)  
Third: [As We Walk Into the Night](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/27153.html)

  
Six months after Stiles had died, Scott had come to his charred bedroom with flowers gripped tight in both of his hands. Stiles had been in the attic then, had felt the vibrations or energy or emotions or whatever ghosts can feel radiating through the floorboards, and he had flickered once to the bedroom and watched Scott place the flowers on the floor. 

“I know you’re here,” Scott had said, his eyes scanning the room. 

Stiles hadn’t said anything, because six months had been long enough for him to realize that yelling was never the answer, even when he yelled himself hoarse, even when he yelled loud enough that the Golden Retriever that lived two houses over would start to bark and growl. Nobody ever heard him, not even Scott, who walked around the flowers in a small semi –circle and called out his name like he was waiting for Stiles to walk in from the other room and ask him to go outside and play soldiers with his father’s hunting rifle. 

“I wanted to tell you,” Scott had said, and then paused, his hands reaching out in front of him, trying to feel something that he would never feel again. “I wanted to tell you that I met a girl.” 

Stiles leaned back against the charred wood of his bedroom wall and watched Scott walk around the room, watched him talk to the dresser in the corner, the dresser Stiles’ father had built with his strong, calloused hands, watched him talk to the mirror on the far wall, watched him talk to the fragments of Stiles’ bed, the oak that had burned and burned and burned. 

Scott had said, “I met a girl and I proposed last night. She’s beautiful, Stiles. And sweet. And kind.” Scott had walked around the room once more, pausing near the doorway, his back to Stiles. “You would love her, Stiles. You would.”

Stiles hadn’t moved, hadn’t made a sound, his hands flat against the charred wall, his fingers outstretched. Something inside of him had wanted him to stay still, and something inside of him had wanted him to stay quiet, and he couldn’t hear his heartbeat and he couldn’t hear the pumping of his blood and sometimes he knew he missed the way his body would feel when he was alive, the way he felt when his father clapped him on the shoulder right before he sent him to bed, the way he felt when his mother had kissed the ridge of his forehead, just above his brow, the way he had felt when he had burned, and something had screamed and screamed inside of him. 

“We’re to be married in the fall,” Scott had said, and Stiles had glanced up, sharply, his eyes meeting Scott’s eyes for one, two, three moments, before Scott had looked away. Scott hadn’t seen him, this Stiles knew with all of his heart. 

“I wanted to tell you before we left,” Scott had said. “We’re leaving for Italy tomorrow. That’s where her parents are from.” 

Stiles had gripped the wood beneath his palms, gripped hard enough to hurt, his hands feeling stronger and more solid, his fingers digging into the wall. 

“I just wanted to let you know, because I won’t be able to come here anymore, I won’t be able to see you.” And Scott had paused, and murmured, “Not that I can see you now.” 

Stiles had felt the stillness inside of himself grow tighter, and he had watched Scott crouch by the flowers on the floor, stretching his hand out almost like he thought Stiles was really there. 

“I love you, Stiles,” Scott had said, and then he had left. 

***

Peter leads Stiles to the back of the house, where he takes him out onto the deck and shows him the acres and acres of woods beyond. “This is where we run,” Peter says, gesturing to the trees. The moon is rising slowly, but Peter shows no signs of discomfort, like Jackson had earlier, like Derek does sometimes, before he tells Stiles to leave him in the dog cage, to let him change without an audience. 

“Wow,” Stiles says before he can stop himself. He can hear the faint chirping of crickets, and he watches as the men start to pour out of the doors below them, watches as they start undressing, folding their clothes neatly into piles and laying them on the patio. Stiles sees Jackson undressing, and Lydia next to him, her nails picking at her clothes delicately, her sweet smile as she turns away from Jackson’s eyes, demurely, and he wants to turn away, but he doesn’t. 

“I can see you like him,” Peter says, his eyes on Stiles. Stiles catches Jackson’s gaze, and turns away, embarrassed, but when he turns back, Jackson is watching him unashamedly, intimately, his naked body gleaming white against the darkening sky. “And I can see that he likes you, too.”

“I already have a,” and then Stiles stops, remembering that Lydia had told him not to mention Derek at all. 

“Oh,” Peter murmurs next to him. “Girlfriend?” 

Stiles doesn’t say anything. 

“Boyfriend, then. Well, nobody’s perfect,” he says, and then laughs, and it sounds wrong to Stiles, sounds predatory. “That won’t matter to Jackson, anyway. Or the wolf.”

“Are they,” Stiles says, and pauses for a moment, because he isn’t sure what he wants to say or how exactly he wants to say it. “Mutually exclusive? Is Jackson only a wolf under the full moon?”

“Oh, no, Stiles,” Peter says. “We’re wolves all the time. It’s just that sometimes wolves can’t let go of their humanity. Jackson is struggling with that right now; he’s not sure how to choose. He wants to be a wolf, but only when it benefits him.” 

“But you’re not like that?” Stiles asks, and watches as Jackson says something to Lydia, watches as Lydia turns back around and smiles, pushing herself up, giving him a kiss. Jackson pulls away after a moment and looks back towards Stiles, curious. And maybe Stiles is doing this wrong, maybe he’s letting Jackson think that this is something more than it really is, but Stiles isn’t sure what else he would want. 

“I was never like that,” Peter says. “I wasn’t made, like Jackson. I was born this way.” 

Stiles tilts his head like a curious dog, and says, “I didn’t know that was possible.” 

The men on the patio are curling around each other in tight circles now, twisting and turning with the strength of the moon, and Stiles watches them steady themselves with palms on their bare stomachs, watches as their knees shake and their shoulders rolls back with pain. There’s something inside of them that’s growing, something inside of them that wants to be let out. 

And Peter laughs again, and this time it sounds less human and more like the howls that Stiles is familiar with, on those nights when Derek scratches at the bottom of his cage, crying for somebody, crying for something. “You don’t know a lot of things,” he says, and it’s biting, and it’s accusatory. He reaches for Stiles’ ghostly hand, but he doesn’t feel as warm as Derek or Jackson or Lydia. 

“But, don’t worry,” he says, his hands cold, his teeth white under the glow of the moon. “I can teach you.” 

***

Stiles runs with the pack. Or, at least tries to, because it’s hard to run when his feet don’t quite touch the ground, and it’s especially hard to run as fast as the wolves do, circling around the trees again and again, nipping at each other, wrestling in the dirt. 

Jackson catches up with him a few times, and Stiles only knows it’s Jackson because he bumps his head against Stiles’ hand and licks his palm and looks at him with something familiar in his eyes, something warm and welcoming, and because he feels so hot to Stiles’ touch, so warm, that Stiles buries his face in Jackson’s fur and forgets about Derek, home alone and howling. 

***

Derek is sitting on the stairs when Stiles walks through the door in the morning. His hands are folded together, and his knuckles look bruised, and there’s a long scratch that starts at his neck and tucks itself underneath his shirt, and he stands up as Stiles closes the door behind him, and he doesn’t say anything, but Stiles knows he can smell the wolves all over his ghostly skin. 

“I know you think that you’re trying to help me,” Derek says, and Stiles hovers by the door, caught between wanting to flicker straight to the attic and wanting to fight about this, about being able to do something that he should have been doing with Derek all along. “But this is isn’t the way.”

“Derek,” Stiles says, and Derek gives him a look that stills him, that turns him cold. 

“This is dangerous,” Derek says. “They are dangerous. You have no idea who they are and what they can do and I know they can’t kill you, but, goddammit, Stiles, there are things out there that are so much worse than death.”

Stiles rolls his eyes, and he says, “It’s just Jackson. I mean, Peter is a little creepy, but Jackson would never hurt anyone.” 

Derek stops dead, his whole body straightening, and then he strides over to Stiles and grips him by his ghostly arms, Stiles flickering once, and then twice, in shock. “Peter?” Derek growls, and then, “Peter Hale?” 

“Yes,” Stiles says, feeling the warmth of Derek’s hands travel up his arms, pulsing and pulsing. “Wait a minute. Is he related to you?” 

Derek lets go of Stiles and moves away, his bare feet stomping dangerously up the stairs. Stiles follows, his voice wavering between something like curiosity and apprehension, low and afraid and saying, “I never even thought about it. Is he your Alpha?” 

Derek walks over to the bedside table and pulls open the drawer there, and Stiles knows what Derek is reaching for even before Derek pulls out the gun, his fingers cold on the butt, his knuckles white. “Derek, no,” Stiles says, but Derek pushes past Stiles and walks down the stairs again. 

“Derek!” Stiles yells, and pulls at Derek’s shirt, even though he can feel himself losing his grip on solidity, even though his fingers go right through Derek’s arm. “Derek, stop.” 

Derek turns around, and Stiles looks up at him and he’s pleading, and Derek says, “There are things that you don’t know about, Stiles. There are things with my family that nobody has a right to know.”

Stiles tries to grip Derek’s arm again, tries to touch him, but he’s almost completely see-through now, almost completely translucent, and he can feel himself growing cold and cold and colder still. 

Derek says, “I’m sorry,” but he doesn’t even sound convincing. 

And Stiles closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, Derek is gone and his fingers are flat against the cold floor of the attic. 

***

After the war, Stiles had watched as a family of five moved into his house. There was a mother and a father and three boys and two dogs, and they celebrated Christmas in the living room that Stiles’ father had wallpapered back when his father had still been alive, and Stiles had watched the man light his pipe and sit in the wingback chair he always sat in after dinner, his ink-stained hands folding open a newspaper as his wife poured him a cup of coffee from the pretty silver coffee press. Stiles had watched as the children took turns opening each of their presents, tearing back the wrapping paper with abandon. 

Stiles had sat in the corner by the stairs, had watched as the smoke from the man’s pipe had curled around and around the ceiling, as the children had rolled their toy trucks over the floor, making explosion sounds with their mouths when the toys bounced off each other. The man had turned each page of the newspaper with the same sense of fragility that he usually saved for his wife, reading every column with interest, his dirty nails and work-worn hands and his wire-frame glasses glinting in the light, and Stiles had sighed and considered flickering back to the attic before something caught his eye. 

There on one of the pages the man had folded and set aside by his chair was Scott, smiling up at him, dressed smart and perfectly upright in his uniform. Local boy killed in action, the headline had read. Survived by his wife and two children. 

And all Stiles could think was at least they didn’t call him a hero. 

And then he had screamed so loud, that the house had shook. 

***

Derek doesn’t come home that night.

Or the night after that.


End file.
